Canada Post is at a disadvantage
There are quite a few companies competing with Canada Post. Canada Post is at a disadvantage to other postal companies because it has to serve every unprofitable outlying area.
Fedex is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee.
UPS is based in Georgia. UPS has seven air hubs, 74 facilities, and 24 supply chain solutions facilities in Canada. It does shipping.
DHL has German headquarters. What is it doing in Canada? For instance, do the Germans buy any Canadian pork from Maple Leaf Foods in exchange for us allowing their postal company to operate in Canada?
Amazon Prime has taken much of the parcel service away from Canada Post.
The pension of Canada Post is going into deficit of about $2 billion a year, and they are operating at a loss.
Why are all these other postal services allowed in Canada, to compete with Canada Post?
These Canada Post competitors are all funnelling their profit out of Canada and taking it to the home countries where they are based. This is not good for Canada and especially not good for Canada Post.
At the very least, these companies should not be allowed to expand further into Canada. They really should be told to leave.
Judy Whytock
Victoria
Some American exports not wanted here
It’s a two-way border. How about Trump stop the guns, manufactured by the millions in the U.S. and easily purchased, from coming across the border, killing Canadians.
How about Trump stopping the illicit drugs in the U.S. from coming across the border, killing Canadians.
And finally, Canadians should stop the cancerous spread of Trumpism from coming across the border.
Gerald Marantz
Parksville
Use hydro rates to encourage going green
The push is on to reduce carbon emissions and have a sustainable energy source. Electricity seems to be the most logical source.
Both the federal and provincial governments are promoting electricity as a viable alternative and offer generous grants for heat pumps, electric vehicles etc.
Our household took advantage of the grant last year when we converted from oil to a heat pump. It works great and we are happy to be rid of the oil furnace.
However, our electricity usage now puts our energy costs into the more expensive Tier Two. This tier was established on Oct. 1, 2008 to promote electricity conservation.
It is not a reflection of more expensive electricity!
I’m sure we are not the only household that is affected by this and things have changed since 2008.
B.C. Hydro should eliminate Tier Two rates as they are unfair to those who want to reduce their fossil fuel consumption. Going green should not cost more.
Tim Silbernagel
Nanaimo
Government must invest in transportation
I think we need another reminder about the ongoing transportation debate and seemingly never-ending battle between motorists and other road users and the transit choices we don’t have.
There are many other cities and regions apart from Paris with a comparable population to the Capital Regional District that have light rail or tram-rail systems, such as Strasbourg, Zurich, Rouen, Bergen and Utrecht.
These are fast, efficient public transit systems and provide people with great public transit choices.
Back in 2011, B.C. Transit, with extensive public engagement, developed the Victoria Regional Rapid Transit Project plan which clearly outlined the preferred rapid transit solutions and determined that Light Rail Transit was the “recommended technology solution.”
The plan also stated that LRT had a higher level of support than BRT (Bus Rapid Transit). This was a public consultation but in failing to see the future, politicians ignored the will of the people and dumped that study.
Over a decade later with no significant reduction in carbon emissions and car journeys, we are left with a capital city and a region that has buses as the only public transit system to get you in and out of Victoria, to and from Swartz Bay, YYJ and the West Shore.
If we need to meet regional growth and connect communities, our future not only includes multi-modal transportation options but depends on an integrated public transit system, and that means some type of urban rail.
The B.C. government is investing $300 million in SeaBus, bus transit and SkyTrain in the Lower Mainland. I think they need to match that investment here on the Island, we’ve waited long enough.
Christina Mitchell
Victoria
A quick snapshot of McKenzie traffic
I thought I’d see for myself what all the fuss is about surrounding the proposal to funnel car traffic on McKenzie Avenue in Saanich into one lane.
So, around 3 p.m. on Nov. 21, I walked along McKenzie from Braefoot Road to Quadra Street.
During my stroll of about 15 minutes, I counted 274 passenger vehicles that passed by me, heading east toward the University of Victoria. About a dozen commercial vehicles (I wasn’t counting) also passed by. Traffic was pretty light.
So how many cyclists passed me?
One.
And that didn’t happen until 106 cars had already gone by.
I also saw one motorcycle, although I wasn’t counting those.
Three passenger buses passed me, the first one after 139 cars had already passed. The buses didn’t include two HandyDarts that had passed earlier. I didn’t count them, either.
The three passenger buses came by within a few minutes of each other. I didn’t encounter too many other pedestrians — maybe half a dozen (I wasn’t counting them). But I did weave through a knot of people waiting at the bus stop at McKenzie and Borden. That indicated a demand for buses.
The buses didn’t have any trouble navigating the traffic despite not having a lane all to themselves.
Now, this was just a snapshot. It could have been anomalous. Were someone else to take the same walk on a different day or different time, they might encounter dozens of cyclists and dozens of buses. Somehow I doubt it.
I can imagine, though, what the vehicular traffic would have looked like were all the passenger cars, trucks and commercial vehicles forced into a single lane, while the curb lane, reserved for buses, was mostly devoid of traffic and the cycle lane was almost entirely empty.
Another cyclist did pass me on my walk back. For some strange reason, though, he decided to ride on the sidewalk rather than use the cycle lane.
Keith Norbury
Saanich
Keep the police budget, find savings elsewhere
Victoria city council slips off the rail yet again. At a time when our police force is straining to meet an increasing variety of policing challenges, council proposes a $2-million budget cut.
That is huge and damaging in the current context. If they are so desperate to save money (which they should be), council might better look to cancelling some of their more expensive boutique projects such as redesigning Centennial Square or creating more confusing traffic impediments.
Indeed, they might re-examine their out-of-control love affair with unneeded and unwanted new concrete.
Start by taking the pencils away from some of the folks in their engineering department, not the police force.
N. “Sandy” Sandford
Victoria
Instead of bike lanes, give us more police
Safe streets with adequate policing are essential.
How to pay? Simply put multi-million-dollar bike lanes on hold. Spend a few thousand on paint to mark the lanes and spend our tax dollars where they are truly needed.
Jan Murray
Victoria
Beware change for the sake of change
Re: “Choose a voting system that we can understand,” commentary, Nov. 8.
Recent weeks have brought the usual post-election calls from those unhappy with the result for changes to our voting system, including this plea for a “simple to understand” ranked ballot.
Such demands for alternatives to our “first past the post” system are often based on the purported superiority of minority governments, which they are more likely to produce.
But these proposals typically ignore the advantages of majority governments that can more easily achieve significant progress and be held accountable for doing so.
The failure of all three attempts to get B.C. voters’ approval for a different system of preferential balloting cannot simply be ascribed to a resistance to change or an inability to understand how it would work.
Some of us genuinely prefer the current system with all of its flaws, and we find proportional representation to be less stable and democratic under our Westminster form of government.
Nor is it clear that a ranked ballot system would be any more “simple”:
• Could an elector choose to rank only one candidate?
• Could more than one candidate be ranked first if they were deemed to be equally qualified?
• If no candidate were considered preferable to all others, could a voter give them all the lowest ranking?
• How would the results be scored, and how easy would it be to tabulate and verify these scores?
• With rules necessary to answer all such questions, who would have to scrutinize the ballots for compliance with them?
• Given the predictable resultant increase in spoiled ballots, how would this be more ”democratic” than our current system?
Be careful what you wish for, including change for change’s sake.
Robin Farquhar
Victoria
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